Christine Brennan wrote an article about skating having no more Kwan and they quote Joe Inman, the judge that cheated to give Sarah Hughes the gold medal in 2002. When I saw his name it literally made me sick.

. Michelle needed two more judges to put her ahead of Irina (but behind Sarah in the LP) and she would have won the gold medal which is how it should have been.

I don’t honestly remember what Irina needed to win but Joe Inman said in an article that he thought Michelle was better in the LP then Irina but he thought Sarah should have won so he put Irina ahead of Michelle. He admitted he tried to fix the competition ignoring the rules. I also remember the alternate judge said she would have given the gold to Irina. The ex soviet republics are all in on these things together to fix for their skaters.

I remember Michelle falling though, right? Did Irina? I know Sarah had a clean free skate but gawd, talk about flailing arms. Between Irina and Sarah though winning gold I would have picked Sarah, only because Irina was just gawd awful to watch on the ice. It was like needles in my eyes. All she did was skate and jump. And at least Sarah had it right picking Michelle as her idol. She even copied her necklace that she wore.

The problem with figure skating is the judges put way too much emphasis on the jumping over everything else. Even though Michelle had fallen on a jump (or put her hand down, which is probably the same as a fall), her artistry and everything else were by far and away above the competition. If only she hadn’t put her hand down she totally would have won gold, IMO. I still don’t know why she got bronze – Irina should have been deducted more for her crappy skate and even her free skate wasn’t clean – so I guess I would have more understood the podium being: Michelle, Sarah, Irina…

Why is it that judges get away with blatant cheating? I don’t understand. They should be tossed out of the federation for life and replaced. It’s not like it can be “that” hard to find a replacement judge.

Michelle overall was much cleaner then Sarah. There is more to skating then jumps. Sarah never connected to her music and looked like a horse on the ice. So did Irina actually.

Michelle fell once in the LP.

There is also more to winning then the LP. The SP counts and Sarah should have been much further down then 4th . She technically did two flips in her SP because her flutz was horrible and she never should have been given credit for her lutz.

Interesting about the flutz – I had forgotten that. I just went online and there are people arguing that Sasha should have won gold or silver, which is laughable. I don’t even remember Sasha’s routines or that she was even there! I’m sure she fell once or twice.

That’s why I can’t watch the sport anymore. It’s mostly ugly now. Technique is thrown out for the jump-chucking, and there’s no longer any focus on artistry and musicality because the judges don’t award appropriately for it.

I didn’t realize Sarah was 4th in the LP – so they really overscored her then for her to win gold, since I think I remember that if you’re in the top three going in to the LP, you win the LP the gold is yours. So Irina and Michelle were both screwed over in a way. Who was 3rd going into the LP?

They didn’t want Sarah to win per say but this all happened after the 2002 ice dancing scandal so this was the last event of that competition. Sarah skated lights out in the LP even if she has the presentation of a wet noodle and they thought people would be up in arms if she didn’t since no one else stood out in the LP.

Sasha was third in the sp

Sasha win? in their dreams.

Irina’s LP was a mess. I don’t remember details just that almost all of her jumps were landed with huge wobbles. She wasn’t screwed, she was in second where she should have been

I re-watched Irina. Most of her jumps were landed “off,” she two-footed one of them and even the commentators were remarking that she was skating “slow” compared to normal. Presentation was still a mess. I guess it would have been interesting had Sarah flopped somehow. Then Irina would have gotten gold. Yuck.

Irina Slutskaya should have won 2002 Olympics. She made less mistakes than Kwan. Hughes should never had been able to get to gold considering how awful her short program was.

The fix was supposedly in the Pairs and Ice Dance with Russia/France fixing it so Russia would win Pairs and the French Ice Dancing. The fact is though those annoying Canadians should always have lost to the Russians in piars because the Russians were better. Meanwhile, no matter if it was fixed the French deserved to win Ice Dance.

And lets cut the bull anyway. It isn’t like the Canadian/American blocs didn’t mark skaters downwards and make their favourites upwards. Whether or not fixing occured. I truly believe the Russians should have won pairs and the French Ice Dance. Slutskaya did not have a perfect LP (That whole competition was rather awful) but she did deserve to win Olympic Gold and due to the earlier fixing scandal involving the pairs she was screwed out of that title.

@Sanitynmotion
This will most likely never get through. I was (am still – sorta) a figure skater growing up and Joe Inman instilled the fear of judges in me. He would judge low/mid level skating tests and would fail nearly every kid b/c they weren’t perfect. I never understood why he was judging them.

So proud that LoLo Jones made the US Bobsled Team which won a silver medal already! Currently she’s travelling the world in a sport which is the polar opposite of track & field. LoLo attended same high school as my daughters & I hired her to train my daughter when she ran high school track during the time LoLo was in college. She’s an amazing young woman!

The Soviets have a hell of a lot more judges to work with then some Canadian\USA tandom. Romania usually votes with them to. There is no way you can justify Irina having the best LP of the night and that was the only way she could win that year.

Irina had skated despite having been on high does of prednisone. does anyone remember that the sac around her heart had been inflamed, and her heart was enlarged? she also was being treated for vasculitous, an inflammation of her blood vessels.
Prednisone, a steroid, reduces inflammation, but causes great fatigue and weight gain.
when she skated, she was off a little here and there and was short of breath. But as I watched her skate under those cardiovascuar and medication challenges, I was blown away that she was even skating! She earned a medal!

Even though she did suffer from medical ailments related to her heart, that does not and should not “earn” you an Olympic medal. We can think of examples of all sorts where one overcame adversity, especially in sports. Dana Vollmer suffered from medical conditions related to her heart and won the gold medal AND set the world record in the 100 meter fly in London; this is even more impressive because in the sport of swimming there is no room for bias. It’s all about the clock.

If Irina were not a Russian she would not have even come close to many of her championship wins. She was good at jumping, and that was it. Otherwise her artistry was just made up of flailing arms and bad posture. She was awful to look at. One of my least favorite figure skaters of all time. Sure she was probably a nice person but I can have an opinion where her figure skating was just bad. Period. No way did she deserve a silver because she was on meds.

no, you should not get handed a medal for being on meds, lol!
Gee, if I did a killer beam routine and some chick beat me bc she was on “meds” i would be screaming mad!
lets be clear. I felt for Irina, but I would go out there and kick her ass to the very best of my ability if I were a skater, and would not be cool with sympathy wins!

I felt for Irina too – I remember her fluff pieces being very inspirational. I just couldn’t help but want to vomit every time I watched her skate. Horrible form and just no artistry whatsoever. She was nothing without her jumps.

Most of the people whining in the US are not from the US. Nastia, her dad, Marta, Bela. I don’t think we should get blamed for that because none of these people are from here. They just work here even if they want to call themselves citizens.